Dramatic Responses to Literature

Getting children to respond to literature is extremely important in measuring their comprehension skills. Graphic Arts: •This can be done by encouraging children to draw or paint pictures or create collages or montages about their favorite stories.  •Drawings and paintings require the simplest of art supplies and minimal initial instruction, yet they allow for a great deal of originality. •Having children draw pictures suggested by picture storybooks can be a means of getting them to explore different artistic styles. •Encouraging children to draw picture after hearing stories read to them can result in some of the most highly individualistic creations. •For those who have limited graphic skills, a collage or montage is a viable alternative. It requires a certain amount of synthesis and analysis. Plastic Arts: •The plastic arts include the three-dimensional, nonpainterly works, such as sculpture and pottery. •One popular art form used widely in the classroom is the diorama, a three-dimensional scene often created from a shoe box or other carton, and decorated with cardboard cutouts, plastic figures, or other suitable objects. •By a further extension of the diorama, children can create miniature stages and puppet figures with which to re-enact a story, thus combining an artistic and a dramatic response to literature.